Writing fanfic...

...is hard! Especially when you don't really know what you're doing. I mean, I went over the Traders story I finished last night. It's okay, (and I suppose it wouldn't matter if it was completely awful, since I doubt anyone will read it!) but I'm a total perfectionist. Which is, I suppose, why I so rarely finish a story. I mean, I've got an Atlantis fic so close to finished but I can't get the last line quite right so I don't post it. It's a totally ridiculous situation.

For a start, I've gone for a slash story. No, not slash really, preslash. That's one problem. I am crap at writing slash. The actual sex bits, anyway. I just don't know what to write. It's not that I don't like slash - I love it. I read way more slash than gen in most fandoms. The problem is that the sex bits in the story don't really interest me. So I suppose I maybe don't pay much attention when I read those bits, I just rush it and get back to the story. What I really like about slash is the interaction between the characters. And yeah, I know you get interaction between the characters in gen, but it's different. So the point is that when I write slash, I either stop before the sex scene, like in my Beckett/McKay story I wrote a few months back, or I sort of skip it and jump to later, like I did in that Big Wolf on Campus story I did years ago. I wish I could write those scenes, but it never looks right when I do. There's something wrong with them!

Okay, so that's a problem, but ignoring that for now the story is still difficult. Especially in Traders, as to he honest I don't really understand half of what is going on. The more I watch it, the more I understand, but a lot of the time it seems like they're speaking some bizarre foreign language – Financise or something - that I don't quite understand. So writing anything that fits in to the show properly would be very difficult without doing a course in it or something! It's not like Stargate where you can just come up with some problem on another planet or something and all you really need to know is the background of the show. Who the people are, what they are doing, a bit about the bad guys and make up something about some random people on another planet. Or something. Well, not all Stargate fic is like that, obviously, but my point is that writing something in the style of an episode would be impossible for me with Traders. With anything else I find myself doing it automatically, even when I originally planned on something short. I have always had trouble keeping stories short. In Traders, I've got to focus purely on the characters and leave any actual story out because it would be impossible for me to write.

And now the characters. As it's slash, sort of, a pairing is needed. The only obvious one is Grant/Donald. It had to be Grant/someone because Grant is by far the most interesting character on the show (and I'm not just saying that because David Hewlett plays him). And with Grant, it has to be Donald because he is the character that he gets on with best, so they have a lot of scenes together. And apparently they move in together in the second series, which leads to all sorts of possibilities. Grant and Donald are friends. And they are a very strange couple. In the first episode, Donald is obviously less than impressed by Grant when Jack brings him to the firm. He says something about how he "Obviously needs to make more friends in low places," but over the course of the first season, they go from that to Donald caring so much about his friendship with Grant that he promises not to see a girl he likes because Grant liked her first. And he climbs a tree after him! :-D So yeah, Grant/Donald is the only really viable pairing in the show, that I can see, based purely on the first season, that is.

The trouble is, neither of these characters are easy to write. Grant especially. Grant’s... a bit weird. (Actually, there have been more than a few times when he has reminded me a lot of myself, which does help in writing him, but that’s beside the point.) He seems a lot more comfortable around computers than people. I could quite easily believe that he has never had a real relationship in his life. Before going to work at Gardner Ross, he had worked one week in his entire life, and the quit to live in a park where he spent a few years hanging out with the pigeons and squirrels. He takes the job on the conditions that he gets no money, no stress, no people around and 50 lbs of chocolate a week. So he’s an odd guy, but he’s so sweet. And he seems to make friends with everyone, at least sort of. Likable. That’s the word. He’s just a really likable guy. I doubt anyone could ever hate him, anyway. But that has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. He is difficult to write because he is so different to any character I’ve ever encountered before. There are a few times when I think ‘that’s so what I would have done/said/thought/whatever’ but other than that it’s difficult to get inside his head. And without getting inside his head, how can you come up with realistic dialogue?

In a way, I have a similar problem with Donald. He’s nothing like Grant, but he is another character that is different to anyone I have ever written before. He’s rich. He’s always been rich. His parents are rich, they’ve disowned him, but because of his job, he’s still rich. Background-wise I don’t think I know anything else about him. He’s also a fairly nice guy, though he can obviously be a bit of a git, because nice people don’t sneak out while their friend is asleep and steal their girlfriend. He made up for it though, when he climbed the tree after him, because that was just too funny. And kinda sweet. Anyway, it proved that he cared more about his friendship with Grant than his relationship with the girl.

So basically, what I’ve got is two fairly difficult to write characters (one more so than the other) in a show that I have a hard enough time understanding, let alone writing about, with no other fanfic around ( that I can find) to use as a reference, but yet I want to write it. Why? No idea. Just if I ever post it and you read it, bear all this in mind!